Friday, June 15, 2007

The Hartord Courant today published a profile of Bushnell Park, with an emphasis on its history. The article, by Susan Campbell, notes that by the 1850s, the area around the state Capitol had become a neighborhood of tenement housing, particularly along the banks of the Park River, also known as the Hog River. "Nearby were leather tanneries, a soap works, a dump, and holding pens for pigs and other livestock," Campbell writes. "A train chugged through. Tenement outhouses emptied into the water." It was the Rev. Horace Bushnell who proposed building a park on the site, arguing that it would cure many urban ills by giving residents a place to reconnect with nature. Thanks to Bushnell and his colleagues, the country's first publicly funded park was built in Hartford. The city named it after Bushnell a few days before his death in 1876. For more information, visit the website of the Bushnell Park Foundation.